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About Rice Is Life
Product Description In Bali, as in many parts of the world, rice is more than just a staple food-rice is life! In Bali, life revolves around the planting and harvesting of rice. While eels slip through the mud and dragonflies flutter overhead, farmers plant seedlings in the wet rice field, or 'saweh.' Soon each plant is crowned with flowers, and tiny green kernels appear. Rain nourishes the kernels, which grow plump and sweet. The green plants turn golden and ripe, and everyone helps harvest the grain. When the harvest is finished, the farmers give thanks to the goddess of rice for a successful crop. From planting the seeds to harvesting the ripe grain, this beautiful, poetic book tells the story of rice and of the Balinese people, for whom rice is life. From Publishers Weekly In verse and in descriptive prose, Gelman (Queen Esther Saves Her People) tours the rice fields, or sawahs, of Bali. On each spread, a poem focuses on the creatures in the sawah (e.g., the eels, the bats that eat the mosquitoes, the mice that nibble at the crops) and a paragraph explains an aspect of the planting, cultivation and harvesting of rice, the staple of the Indonesian diet. The poems are inconsistent. Lyrical passages coexist with sing-song or stale lines ("In the darkness of the sawah/ With a yellow moon above/ Comes a serenade of frogs/ Singing out their songs of love"). The prose, however, is graceful, whether explaining how rice plants sprout or how children roast dragonflies for snacks. The lesson culminates with a farmer and his family offering thanks to Dewi Sri, goddess of rice. Choi's (The Sun Girl and the Moon Boy) brightly bordered panels offer radiant scenes of the sawah. Imaginatively framed, the illustrations glow with saturated colorDemerald green frogs, ruby red dragonflies, deep magenta sunsets, sunlit yellow grainDand make this book inviting as well as educational. Ages 4-9. (May) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Gelman lived for nine years on the island of Bali in Indonesia, researching Balinese culture. She presents her firsthand knowledge in a series of delicate poems and prose vignettes about the centrality of rice to the Balinese, who eat rice for every meal, and whose lives revolve around tending the sawah, or rice field. She shows the drama of a planting season, conveying the rhythm of planting, the richness of the natural environment above and below the water line, the threats to the rice presented by hungry birds and mice, the harvest, and the ceremony of thanksgiving. The information never crosses into encyclopedia-entry territory thanks to Gelman's light, poetic touch and Choi's oil-on-paper paintings. The page-and-a-quarter and double-page spreads pulsate with warmth and are filled with the creatures (eels, egrets, dragonflies, bats, frogs, spiders) that inhabit the sawah. A delight that will fascinate younger readers. Connie Fletcher Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Review Set in Bali, each double-page spread contains a green-and-gold hued, oil on paper, framed illustration of the life cycle of growing rice. Within the frames are poems, which capture the essence of the farming families and the beauty of their environment. Outside of the frames are prose paragraphs that compliment the poems and paintings by giving more information about the rice-growing culture. A highly successful, original format. A 2000 Parents' Choice® Silver Honor winner. Reviewed by Kemie Nix, Parents' Choice® 2000 -- From About the Author Rita Golden Gelman is the author of more than fifty books for children, including More Spaghetti, I Say! and Dawn to Dusk in the Galapagos. She lived in Bali, Indonesia for nine years, learning about the people and the important place that rice holds in their culture. Yangsook Choi was born in Korea and lived there until she moved to New York to study at the School of Visual Arts. She has illustrated several books for children, in
